This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2004-0094553, filed on Nov. 18, 2004 in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for displaying images, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for displaying images using a duplex thumbnail mode, in which images larger than thumbnail images are created when photographing, to display an activated thumbnail image together with a larger version of the activated thumbnail image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital camera technology is still relatively new, but it is quickly advancing in refinement and popularity. Digital cameras store images as binary data and can directly transfer the images to a computer without having to develop, print, or scan the images.
Digital cameras use imaging devices such as charge coupled devices (CCDs) to convert electrical image signals into digital signals, and digital signals of the photographed subject are stored in a memory or relevant data is output via an output device through a compression/restore operation of the digital camera.
Digital cameras store image data in memory cards or similar digital storage media instead of on film like conventional cameras. Thus, digital cameras avoid the inconvenience and storage limits of film, allowing the user to immediately access images by using a computer to read the stored images from the digital camera's memory card.
That is, by outputting the image data to a computer monitor, the photographic images may be checked without having to additionally develop the images. In addition, the digital images may be easily edited according to the desire of the user. This allows easy enlargement and reduction, as well as touching up or other modifications to improve the state of the photographed image as the user sees fit.
Such digital cameras support a thumbnail mode which displays a plurality of images on a single screen to conveniently reproduce the photographed images. For the reproduction of the thumbnail image mode, common images and thumbnail images are created and stored together when reproducing image files after photographing the images, and the thumbnail images are retrieved from the image files and displayed when reproducing the thumbnail images. The thumbnail mode can make searching through the photographed images quicker and more convenient.
However, the thumbnail images reproduced on a screen are small, thus making it difficult to identify the state of the images. In order to identify the state of the thumbnail images that are activated by direction keys, the thumbnail images are enlarged, the state of the thumbnail images are checked, and then the digital camera returns to the thumbnail mode to continue the image search. As a result, unnecessary operations cause inconvenience in using the thumbnail mode.